p. 173 | POWER OF THE GOSPEL by Rev. B. F. Butler.

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 16, 1860

POWER OF THE GOSPEL.

By Rev. B. F. Butler.

REVIEW the history of our religion. See it on the day of Pentecost, "beginning at Jerusalem;" melting into penitence the bigoted and cruel multitude whose hands are yet reeking with its Author's blood; spreading despite the power and malice of its enemies, through Judea and the surrounding provinces; gathering its trophies in the idolatrous cities of Asia; crossing into Greece; confuting the philosophy of Athens; invading Italy; entering the palaces of the Cæsars; flying with the Roman eagles, to the farthest corners of the earth; and reforming the habits and moulding the polity of nations the most diverse in their origin, circumstances, and laws. See its influence on the character of individuals; how it turns the proud, unsocial Jew into the disinterested lover of mankind: the persecuting Saul into the affectionate apostle; the heathen of Antioch into Christian confessors; the scoffers of Athens—the Epicureans, Stoics, and the careless votaries of folly and amusement—into penitent believers; the voluptuaries of Corinth into self-denying disciples; the idolaters of Galatia, and Ephesus, and Phil-lippi, and Thessalonica, into saints and martyrs. See it pouring into the bosom of the Roman, the new sentiments of humility; abolishing polygamy, slavery and

the parental power of life and death; mitigating the penal law; confining, within just limits, that of divorce; and bringing back to connubial life the blessedness of Eden, by raising woman to the companionship, the duties, and the confidence for which she was designed.

See it, in after ages, humanizing the ferocious Britain; softening the Vandal; and teaching mercy to the Goth. See it scattering throughout Europe the seeds of truth, and justice and humanity, and social order, from which have sprung those various institutions which render Christendom so superior in government, in knowledge, in the arts and charities of life, and in all the elements of individual, domestic, and national happiness, to the most favored portions of the Mohammedan and Pagan world. See it from age to age, repeating its miracles of mercy, in the transformation and improvement of human character; changing the vulture to a dove, the tiger to a lamb; teaching the revengeful to forgive, and the miser to be liberal; purifying the hearts of the unclean, the hands of the fraudulent, and the lips of the profane: making the proud man humble, and chastening the desires of the ambitious; filling the bosoms of the poor, the friendless, and the afflicted, with resignation, cheerfulness, and hope; converting, oftentimes, the abandoned drunkard and the profligate debauchee—the very plague-spots of the earth—into ornaments of society and benefactors of mankind.—Rev. B. F. Butler.